Lead Creative Strategist

WHO ARE WE? The bigger picture: DEPT® is a pioneering technology and marketing services company that creates integrated end-to-end digital experiences for brands such as Google, TikTok, eBay, ASOS, Zoopla, Twitch, Patagonia and many, many more. 

Our team of 4,000+ digital specialists across 30+ locations on five continents deliver pioneering work on a global scale with a boutique culture. We live and breathe our ‘big enough to cope, small enough to care’ ethos, providing an inclusive, supportive and an exciting place to accelerate your career.   

This position sits in our Marketing & Technology business based in London. We combine data, technology, creative content, and paid media to crack brands’ business problems & drive revenue through a variety of digital marketing solutions like ad campaigns, augmented reality, and chatbots. Our clients include ASOS, Just Eat Takeaway, Twitch, TikTok, and The White Company.

JOB PURPOSE

At Dept® we don’t believe in siloed teams – creative, technology, media and data overlap, and the Strategy team provide clear, directive advice that guides our clients and our work.  The Lead Creative Strategist will be overseeing the development of strategy for all the brands we support and be responsible for delivering high quality strategic work. They will work closely with our client account planners, creative planners, technology planners, media planners and marketing science planners.

Marketing and technology are converging at a rapid rate. Technology can now deliver the marketing promise of personalised communications at scale. However, technology is useless without ideas that capture consumers’ imaginations. We need someone who understands our clients’ customers, who can put themselves in their shoes to creative strategies and ideas that exceed expectations, who understands that brands are competing for consumers’ attention and have at best a couple of seconds to inspire some sort of interaction. We need people who can come up with big ideas and inspire the creation of lots of little ones that are framed in a solid strategy grounded in insight and ultimately deliver a tangible ROI for our clients.

The Lead Creative Strategist will be expected to deliver:

• Market-leading strategic thinking across a range of different clients and their channel ecoystem, creating audience first strategies, that are able to be deployed through all the channels the audience may use; there is a strong focus on being able to do work that thinks digital first, but has the ability to work across all spaces. 
• Manage and run the overall strategic direction of our key clients like Just Eat and ebay. We are often trusted as the lead strategic partner across our clients so we need smart, solid strategic thinking across the board. This role needs to deliver on this. 
• Always looking to create influential and powerful strategies for our clients, ensuring that we continue to be push them to be the most advanced, efficient and effective brands in the fields they operate within
• Leadership: resulting in quality output of strategic planing across the business
• Senior stakeholder relationships: build relationships with our clients and internal stakeholders 

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

The role of the Lead Creative Strategist is exciting, varied and constantly evolving. In this role, you will:

• Support leaders across the business to develop and test new strategies and oversee plans to deliver successful, ROI-positive approaches alongside current activity
• Innovate our offering working closely with tech, creative, media and analytics to ensure we are delivering market-leading strategic approaches to our clients
• Support planners across the business with strategic guidance and best practice training
• Work with senior clients and consult on key strategy projects
• Lead strategic work for clients, ensuring we are leading the industry and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible while delivering incremental improvements on ROI
• Participate in new business pitches
• Serve as a thought leader across the business on topics of planning, strategy and innovation across our 4 key areas of tech, data, media and creative

SKILLS AND PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE 

Essential:

• Advanced level understanding & experience within digital marketing
• A high level of relevant experience within a strategy-focused role
• A solid understanding &  experience within social media marketing
• Expert understanding of digital paid media and data
• Expert understanding of digital advertising data sources, including advanced attribution methodologies, third party tracking and measurement/campaign management technology
• Advanced understanding of social media data sources, including paid and organic data
• Advanced skills with Facebook/Instagram Ads, Snapchat Ads, Google Ads, Twitter Ads and Pinterest Ads
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, including the ability to communicate complex subjects simply
• Ability to work with senior clients on key strategy projects and comfortable presenting to C-level audiences
• Very efficient, producing significant output with minimal wasted effort
• Focused under pressure and can get stuff done on a tight deadline
• Loves learning and teaching new things
• Great interpersonal and listening skills
• Very organised, with a high attention to detail
• Ability to work autonomously and find solutions without help

Nice to have:

• Experience working in and loving a marketing agency / start-up environment
• Experience using data visualisation tools like Tableau and Google Data Studio
• Experience working with developers to build technology solutions

HEALTH, WELLBEING & BENEFITS:

• Possibilities to do what you do best and to develop your skills further with training development and certifications
• A flexible, hybrid working policy
• The choice of medical healthcare providers (Bupa or Medicash) 
• 25 days holiday plus bank holidays and your birthday off each year
• Company pension scheme 
• EAP scheme
• Ride to work scheme 
• Enhanced family friendly policies
• Buddy Program: You will be paired with a ‘Buddy’ to help you through your first weeks’ at DEPT®
• Annual trip to the DEPT® Festival in the Netherlands: a chance to meet other people in DEPT®, see great talks from industry leaders, and have an all-expenses-paid weekend of fun! 
• Global Annual DEPT® Cares Day which cadets can donate their skills to support local charities
• Other soft benefits including, refreshments provided in the office and a social calendar with weekly and monthly events on a team and agency level  

DEPT® is committed to making a positive impact on the planet and since 2021 has been Climate Neutral and B Corporation certified.

DEPT® is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace that seeks to recruit, develop, nurture and retain the most talented people from a range of diverse backgrounds, skills and perspectives. We encourage all applications irrespective of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, age, nationality, marital status, and disability. 

Learn more about our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts here.